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1 PLAY IN HUMAN SETTLEMENTS: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH
Ethel Bauzer Medeiros
This book gives reassuring evidence of the continuance of concerted international efforts to promote play in human settlements. It is a significant follow-up to the advance accomplished at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, when ‘leisure and recreation’ were extracted from the vague heading of ‘Other social services … essential to communities’, to be granted separate attention. But even as UN Recommendation C.18 was adopted, the necessity for being unrelenting in our crusade pressed upon all, since we realized, with the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1913), that ‘the day never breaks for those who lean their heads on the breast of dreamed hours’.1 This book proves this determination and, above all, it demonstrates a solidarity which ignores borders, elevating our hopes for a more humane mankind.
Although play has been a constant dimension of all cultures throughout history and, in our too quickly changing society at present, is amounting to an element of survival, queries about its value continue to be raised. ‘Why worry about play when communities both in developing and developed countries are still in the throes of grave problems of health, nutrition, housing, employment, and education?’ ‘What does play signify to men that makes it deserving of such solicitude?’ ‘Would so much care not appertain only to the quixotic inhabitants of nowhere?’ ‘Granting that play is a major natural part of human life, why interfere with its spontaneity by planning and providing for it? Would that not be contradictory?’ Briefly, the chronic charges against play are: with regard to the scale of social values, it is not regarded with enough seriousness; in relation to thinking, it is based on utopian ideas; and in reference to practice, it is an exercise in paradox. Merely in the affective domain might play advocates be condoned, owing to their enthusiasm (the term taken in its original sense of ‘divine inspiration’).
Some support, nevertheless, is won when the focus is put on children, since they play anyhow, even in sickness or poverty. Such endorsement also appears appropriate in a society which purports to be child-loving. In addition, people admit, some physical facilities for their play keep the young out of the path of the ever-diligent adults, thereby allowing the latter more time to enlarge the Gross National Product … Furthermore, in large centres, play-lots introduce fresh air, sun and glimpses of broader horizons to high-rise dwellers, counterbalancing their ever-increasing artificial environment. Such facilities supply entertaining pastimes and healthy exercise to children, thus hastening their blooming into hard-working citizens (who indisputably personify their ideal). In the inner city, in peripheral slums, and in concentrations of migrant populations, vandal-proof equipment (paternally sprinkled about) may encourage better social interaction and deter delinquency. Disadvantaged youth will thus be initiated into social rules and roles, a turning-point in their enculturation to the adult’s ‘model’ world. Such images of play might explain its lesser rank in the adults’ common order of priorities.
These ever-recurring contentions will be re-examined in this book, taking advantage of the richly diverse backgrounds of the authors – a team of notable experts from various fields, who also compose a multicultural group. It will hopefully instigate a re-evaluation of the coherence between practices and professed aims. While so doing, however, the fundamental questions of who we human beings are and what our purpose in life is shall eventually be touched. This risky venture, nevertheless, appears essential, seeing that more cogent arguments are needed for society to invest time, energy and funds in play.
Coming from Brazil (one of the so-called developing countries), mine is a long experience of trying to make the best out of limited means. It further includes coping daily with sharply contrasting modes of life, from the traditional relaxed and sometimes patriarchal agrarian ways to the urban-industrial style of the wheel-borne hurried masses of consumers. This very predicament, however, facilitates insight into man’s urges. On the one hand, severe restrictions impose a most thoughtful ordering of priorities: each choice demands cautious weighing of the renunciations it exacts. On the other hand, actual participation in diverse systems favours a more objective assessment of human pursuits: personally experienced contrasts highlight ever-present cravings.
Of late, these basic drives are surfacing more clearly, as fast planes and sturdy trucks overcome the last physical distances, brusquely bringing close together disparate cultures. Meanwhile, truly two-way telecommunication brings into our very homes the behaviours, judgements and beliefs of all sorts of people. Under such magnifying lenses, man’s deeper aspirations seem easier to discern. In addition, as far-reaching transportation and communication means spread to more people and heighten in others the awareness of the technological gap, feelings of deprivation are enhanced and the strongest longing voiced. When vaguely felt needs grow so intense that they develop into demands, massive co-ordination of available resources is claimed to make them function as adequate supplies. Out of this process fundamental motives emerge. Among them stands out self-expression (namely the outlet of inner-pressing thoughts and sentiments) which would seem to rank near food and shelter. Despite the fact that our time-budget studies are just beginning, it is obvious that people do not wait to grow flowers until they have all their vegetables. Also, even in areas where temperatures might exceed 39°C (102°F), television sets outnumber refrigerators, though both cost about the same (antennae sprouting on most rooftops, including slums). Man seems to want more out of life than a purposeless, stultifying, day-to-day struggle to remain alive, which would reduce him to ‘a postponed corpse that procreates’, in the words of the Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.2
Empty, machine-like hours, devoid of an ultimate concern, threaten man’s self-concept, the core of his personality, his most precious trait, the fundamental quality which sets him apart from the other nearly two million species on earth. The respect that he owes to himself and that he demands from others, the inherent dignity of his human condition, appears incompatible with meaningless activity. Even in the remotest past, when mass production and automation had not yet so curtailed work satisfactions, senseless occupation equalled punishment. The Greek mythology relates how, after his death, Sisyphus, the cruel king of Corinth, was condemned to keep rolling a huge stone up a hill, merely to see it fall back and have to start anew. Modern urban life reminds Camus (1942) of such penance, and he rejoices when man rebels against it:
Get up, streetcar, four hours at the office or factory, eat, streetcar, four hours of work, eat, sleep, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with the same rhythm … But one day the why arises, and everything begins with this fatigue coloured by surprise … 3
Instead of bewailing such grim reality, man can refuse to surrender to hopeless servitude and rally the courage to review his existence. At that, he perceives how many loci of control lie in his own hands, and rises to fulfil the duties commensurate with the rights of belonging to the human race. Not mistaking a worthy life for an apathetic or a plaintive resignation to ‘destiny’, he uses the privilege of his ‘conditioned freedom’ (as Merleau-Ponty designates it) to shape the thread of his own life. Though he cannot choose his spinning-wheel and must reconcile himself to the material he is able to secure, he may select the patterns with which to weave his identity.
Unsubmissive to the modern golden calf of technology, he distinguishes between having more and being more humane (Marcel, 1968).4 He discriminates labour from work, noticing that the first never ends and leaves no trace of itself as it barely provides for survival, while the second yields permanent (and so, reassuring) results. But along with Arendt (1958), he sees that man’s noblest sphere lies in action, served by facts and words. In such area, labour skills or tangible work products are not relevant, for man reveals himself through his acts, as he thinks, wills and judges while relating to others. To this view, I would add that as he ascends from mere subsisting (by ceaseless toil) to existing (on the rewards of his work), and from there to co-existing (in constructive interpersonal relations), he deepens his appreciation of the role of self-expression. Along such upgrowth, play, a satisfying mode of achieving self-expression, mounts in importance to him, irrespective of his age and of the state of development of his society.
Would he wish to delve into the matter, play’s impact at the biological level would strike him. Defining health as does the World Health Organization – a state of complete well-being, and not mere absence of disease – he would perceive how play functions, at its very least, as a wholesome activity, for its voluntary engagement of total man. Its physical, mental, social and spiritual benefits can then vindicate play’s promotion by any society, regardless of the respective stage of development. More than that, in this swiftly changing age, play fosters health as it helps man deal with the demands posed by incessant environmental modifications. Not to linger on stress, let us just think of health as an expression of fitness to the total milieu. Any alteration of the ecosystem then summons from man new adaptive reactions, which if inadequate entail disease, organic or psychotic. The endless mutations of our times ask successive (and trying) readjustments which endanger man’s health. He has ‘to keep running simply to remain in the same place’, at a forced pace that makes it ever harder for him to balance the intake of tranquillizers and energizers. A French saying underlines such instability, warning that ‘good health is a provisional state that heralds no good tidings’.5 Creative play, inasmuch as it allows man to transform given reality in terms of the demands he places on it (giving him freedom temporarily to modify his surroundings), contributes to man’s fundamental ability to cope with unpredictable changes. Furthermore, because some amount of tension and risk seems essential to full growth (Dubos, 1959), play instigates development, as it joyfully offers such conditions. Instead of yielding to daily strains and stresses in Thoreau’s ‘quiet desperation’, man can discover that life may be a chosen adventure, and elect to employ his store of adaptive energies in goal-seeking activites. A life devoted to protection against threats, concentrated on security, lacks the healthy creative qualities found in chosen pursuits. Researchers have shown that even rate, when domesticated, are less capable of withstanding difficulties. Comfort-loving, passive rats – or men – might not then be the most likely to succeed in our competitive society. If work is so regulated that it does not offer much chance for creative activities, leisure hours (perhaps man’s only real possession on earth) seem a unique occasion for them. Shunning the evasion provided by mere diversions, man might turn to re-creation and derive the joys of real participation, with its repercussions on his mental growth through happy achievements and increased self-respect. Play would then mean an important factor in survival.
Turning now to the social plane, man observes how play can act as a catalyst of group cohesion – a critical issue in this divided world, where an alarming population explosion multiplies hardships and sharpens competition for finite resources. Crowds so stifle men that they search for privacy, cloistering themselves in what they significantly name apart-ments. There, however, loneliness preys upon them. Painstakingly erecting barriers among themselves, men then deplore indifference. But ignoring all these obstacles, play functions as a lingua franca, our last one perhaps in this age of specialists, each with his own outlook and terminology, and more eager than the next to improve on the curse of Babel (‘that they may not understand one another’s speech’). Play creates a common bond, reminiscent of that found in ancient magical rites, when music, dance, drama, and poetry united men as they looked for loftier realms. Through superb self-control, they rose above petty material concerns, to liberate their innermost powers and contact spiritual beings. One of the oldest texts from India, the Puranas, describes how the Lord created the universe by dancing to the sound of tambours. Then, Shiva Nataraja and his consort, Parvati, taught people how yoga and dance could help them communicate with supernatural powers and feel linked to their Creator. An ancient Hindu manual advises: ‘the dancing foot, the sound of tinkling bells, the songs that are sung, and the varying steps…, find out these within yourself, then shall your fetters fall away.’
As societies grow in complexity, however, man’s basic problems change their focus. If, in the past, control of physical environment was pre-eminent, now that technology dominates the world to an incredible degree, human relations hold the greatest difficulty. Travellers boarding a plane trust its turbines but fear their fellow passengers. Social responsibility has long left the province of alternatives posed to individuals to enter the field of survival.
Leisure, too, as it expands and reaches more people, overlaps personal or even local planes, to integrate social welfare concerns. There it deserves special attention, for it depends on the thorny exercise of freedom. Society should then cater to it, irrespective of its stage of development. The less participating its members, however, the more threatened its solidarity, its traditions, and its further generation of culture. Public support of free-time pursuits would then be rewarding, indeed.
For those obsessed with cost/benefit analyses, additional advantages should be pointed out, particularly in developing countries. Among them is the meagreness of material requirements for play as compared with play’s high returns in jobs (found in the manufacture and trade of goods used in play’s ‘non-productive’ activities and in correlated services). There is also the further enlargement of employment opportunities for those for whom play would help improve non-academic skills (such as skills associated with the right hemisphere of the brain). In the early years, stimulating play might reduce the losses incurred through school failures and drop-outs, and the probably related deficient cognitive abilities. Most of all, play’s relationship to creativity bears on leadership training and on the development of local know-how, both decisive factors in adapting transferred technology and in advancing towards technological autonomy.
Going beyond biological, mental, and socio-economic domains, to l...
